IRELAND

Went in to Dublin City Center today at the speed of light. Light rail, that is - Dublin has a pretty convenient tram system.

I went to the National Museum and explored the Viking (Dublin is a Viking town) and Medieval stuff, as well as an exhibit on kingship and sacrifice that included four preserved corpses found in bogs, apparently sacrifices. They were a bit uncanny, particularly the fellow who'd had his head cut off, his thorax separated from his abdomen, and his nipples severed.

Also morbidly compelling was the skull of a slave or a hostage found on a viking site along with a great iron length of chain and neck collar. The person had been struck more than twenty times in the head with a sword or an axe, and the wounds were quite visible. I was surprised that so many of them had failed to penetrate the bone, actually. I tried to work out if he'd had half his face sliced off or if that was damage from age, but I couldn't.

There were pretty things too, including a lovely small collection of clothing fragments from late Roman/early Byzantine Egypt :D

Had lunch on the steps, then went back in to sketch stuff, mostly in the prehistoric exhibit. A museum guard spotted me squatting and drawing and very kindly got me one of the little folding stools that they keep for artists :3

The only non-prehistoric stuff I sketched was a few interesting medieval mace heads for  ExTo ;3

Tomorrow's my last day here! Then I'm off to England, and  Godzuki!